China said likely to have provided North Korea with submarine missile

A submarine-launched missile that was successfully test-fired by North Korea last week likely was provided to the Kim Jong-Un regime by China, a U.S. analyst said.

Test-fire of what North Korea calls its KN-11 missile.

Bruce Bechtol, a North Korea analyst at Angelo State University in Texas, said the North’s SLBM, known as KN-11, looks like a “carbon copy” of China’s JL-1 submarine missile. …

The North Korean missile is believed to be “a JL-1 or a very, very close variant,” Bechtol said. “Just looking at the JL-1 and the North Korean SLBM, they’re looking exactly the same.”

Bechtol said that China has a record of providing the North with military hardware, saying the North acquired transporter-erector-launchers (TEL), a vehicle used in carrying and launching missiles, from China in recent years.